Главная страница | Контакты | Случайная страница Автомобили Астрономия Биология География Дом и сад Другие языки Другое Информатика История Культура Литература Логика Математика Медицина Металлургия Механика Образование Охрана труда Педагогика Политика Право Психология Религия Риторика Социология Спорт Строительство Технология Туризм Физика Философия Финансы Химия Черчение Экология Экономика Электроника

Young people

A reversal of previous inequality, however, is taking place among younger people. It starts at school, where girls are now out-performing boys. Fifty per cent of girls now achieve the top three grades of the secondary education examination (Grades A-C at GCSE), compared with only 40 per cent of boys. Girls not only work harder at school, but also prepare themselves more carefully at all stages for obtaining employment. They are also increasingly thought to have better skills at teamwork, and the achievement of objectives by consensus.

This is'not solely to do with the fact that boys mature later. Many boys have watched their fathers become unemployed and idle at home. It is a dispiriting role model. Manual work, in which physical prowess was important, notably mining, steel production, heavy engineering, has radically declined. Since 1980 over two million male jobs have been lost. Boys, too, are far more frequently targeted by drug pushers and are twice as likely to be the victims of crime or violence than women. In a society in which an increasing proportion of women have children outside marriage, unmarried fathers have no rights over the children. Such factors add up to a widespread loss of self-esteem and the loss of an identifiable male role for many boys. A growing number of young women feel they can do without men. Thus, alongside growing gender equality lies the danger of a large number of young men with little purpose in their lives, something which itself may generate major social problems.

All young people tend to worry about employment, to the extent that they are far less rebellious than young people in the 1960s and 1970s. They also have fewer interests outside those spheres relevant to obtaining a job. According to a survey carried out in 1997 by the Industrial Society, only 40 per cent have any interest whatsoever in politics. Most find it irrelevant. But they are more disciplined than they used to be. No fewer than 78 per cent think that discipline both at school and at home is too lax. Sixty-three per cent of them feel school let them down. The Industrial Society drew a picture of an optimistic, 'can-do' generation who want to better themselves through education, while learning practical skills. They aspire to traditional values, for example preferring the idea of marriage and family stability to partnerships, possibly because many know the trauma of parents divorcing. But they are also more isolated than their parents' generation. Only one in five feel they are part of a community, a sad reflection on the atomisation of modern British society.